Cow Traffic Score.

Do you think (some of) your cows could use the robot / feed fence more often?

During my farm visits, I often use the 10-point score:
Your cow gets 10 points.
If she’s not walking very well, we deduct 2-5 points, depending on the severity.

If there’s little space around the robot to get in or the robot is too crowded, we deduct another points.
If the basic ration doesn’t taste good, or she’s on the verge of rumen acidosis, we deduct another 2-5 points.

If the robot isn’t milking optimally, or if parts are worn, etc., we deduct another point.

There are other factors, such as illness, bedding comfort, and routing, that can result in (penalty) points.

The fewer deduction points the better!

How many points do your (collected) cows have left?

This method can provide insight into assessing your cows’ robot visits.

Shut down and restart the robots and computer regularly.

We know it’s good to completely shut down and restart the robot(s) and computer occasionally. We know that’s good, but when do we do it?

A technician advised using that moment to shut down everything when replacing the teat liners. This way, it happens regularly and takes almost no time!

Make sure you give the system time to drain all (leakage) power.

Heifers learn to visit the VMS faster.

Another handy tip from a technician.

We regularly discuss here how important it is for newly lactating cows, and especially heifers, to learn to visit the VMS independently quickly after calving.

Because we can now divide lactation into five periods in the Automatic Milk Permission, it’s also possible to use the first period for newly calved heifers, for example, the first 20 days after calving. Use the same setting as the second period (from 5 hours and/or 7-9 kg expected milk yield), but let them enter the red zone after just 8 hours. For 2+ lactations, if there are no real problems, this would only be necessary for the first 10 days.

This way, newly calved animals are immediately identified if they need more time to learn or if they are experiencing other issues.

The sooner after calving you exceed 3 milkings per day, the better the lactation and udder health!!

How long does it take to increase or decrease concentrates?

Many livestock farmers and feed consultants are still unclear about how DeLaval DelPro works with increasing or decreasing concentrates. After calving, it’s often clear, but especially after adjustments to the feed tables, things can go wrong. The default setting for increasing concentrates is 0.250 kg per day, and the default decrease is 0.150 kg per day. However, the latter is often adjusted to 0.100 kg per day.
Suppose a cow should receive 3 kg less concentrate, it will take her 30 days to do so. The feed table will then ignore this cow during these 30 days. This is fine for some cows, but often they are receiving too much concentrate for too long.
At many farms, I often add a column to their favorite Feed Control list that shows how many days a cow still needs to increase or decrease her concentrate intake.

How do you do that?
Go to your favorite Feed Control List. If it’s a “custom list,” you’ll see a triangle in the top bar. Clicking it will open a small window on the right. Find “Feeding.” Then “Ration.” Among the many options, you’ll also see “Target Days.” Drag this to your list.
It will then ask you which feed type you’re referring to. If you have multiple feed types, you can choose; of course, the feed type that changes most is the most important.
Just refresh the list, and the days will appear. Sort by these, and you’ll see which cows will still take the most days to build up or reduce their feed intake.
If it’s correct, leave it as is; if it’s not, double-click on the cow and adjust “Feeding” to what you think is a good plan for this cow.

This gives you even more control over the correct amount concentrate feed for each cow!

Dear reader,

To make searching easier you can read the Tips per category on these pages.

So for information about, for example, udder health or concentrate supply, you can find which Tips have been written about this per category since 2010.

There are Tips that are old and Tips that fit into multiple categories.

The latest published Tips can still be found below and on the right side.
On the phone you will find the categories on this page under the last 5 Tips.

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